In particular, the invention addresses the problem of efficient scheduling of data flows, especially in Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS) for a transfer of data between at least one mobile station also termed user equipment (UE) and a so called NodeB of the core Network (CN), such as a local base transceiver station (BTS), i.e. for an UMTS Uplink shared Channel (USCH) between the mobile station and the base transceiver station.
As known, in packet switching networks the task of multiplexing essentially reduces to the task of ordering packets and to then send them serially over a shared link. This process of serialization is referred to as scheduling. The benefit of packet switching is based on the multiplexing gain, where some data flows benefit from unused resources from other temporarily inactive data flows. The disadvantage of this service compared to a circuit switched service is a lack of predictability in such systems. Significantly, predictability of system behavior is one important measure of quality. Some services, e.g. internet communication or facsimile transmission services need stronger Quality of Service or “QoS” guarantees than others as for example pure speech data transmission. Quality of Service (QoS) scheduling tries to balance the amount and timing of the received service for each flow according to the respective data flow requirements.
In the downlink data transmission, the radio access network has a complete or perfect knowledge of how much, when, and to whom packet transmissions are made or will have to be made within a certain interval of time, and hence a central controlled manner can be used without any explicit signaling transmission. For the uplink data transmission, however, the radio access network does not have such a complete or perfect knowledge. Thus, due to the lack of knowledge of e.g. transmission traffic volume and synchronization between a plurality of user equipment's (UEs) there is the need for some signaling between the UE and the NodeB, such as the UMTS-radio access network (UTRAN) of a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) to enable the radio network controller (RNC) to schedule the uplink traffic. Based thereon, some traditional uplink transmission schemes employ a random access scheme, e.g. according to the 3GPP UMTS standards. However, it would be desirable to use a controlled unit for uplink data transmission similar to a central controlled unit for downlink data transmission.